A speculative mind

  What got me first was the cover: bright red with silver letters disclosing terrified eyes. Then there was the title:  Silver Nitrate . I was intrigued. Then I saw that the author was Silvia Moreno-Garcia and that sealed the deal. I had to buy it. I have read a couple of books by her: Mexican Gothic , and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau , both of which I enjoyed. I guess you would classify these books as horror, but I would not call them really frightening reads, more like disturbing with a side of horror, yet with well-developed characters and plot. Is there such a genre as “literary horror?” Probably. There is a genre for just about everything. But that is how I think of her books, sort of high-class horror. Silver nitrate was a type of movie film that was the standard until the 1950’s when safety film was introduced. Silver nitrate film was a superior product in many ways giving vivid projections to the screen. Unfortunately, silver nitrate film was extremely flammable and...

  I think it is a fallacy that to be a writer, you have to be an interesting person. After all, they always tell you: ‘write what you know.’ If all you have known is a boring life, how can you write about that? Who would want to read it? I have been doing this blog for six years now. While I do not fool myself that this is the New Yorker , I am reasonably pleased with the work I have done. Though I write it mainly for me, it has gotten some notice. This blog seems to be particularly popular in Hong Kong for some reason. I say all this because I am not an interesting person. Well, I am as interesting as the next guy, but I mean I am not especially interesting. I have not discovered any scientific breakthroughs, ridden a rocket to space, joined the Peace Corps to help people in some dark corner of the world. I have never been in the military, not a doctor, nor ridden the Deadliest Catch ice waves of Alaska. On the other hand, I have not had my city bombed or suffered unspeakable t...

  You sometimes hear people musing about the changes they have seen in their lifetimes. I know that in the scope of my life I have seen quite a few. When I was a child there was no internet, no cell phones. If you wanted to contact someone far away, you had to write them a letter, or, if it was urgent use a land line phone to make a long-distance call or a telegram. Both were discouraged because they cost money. For electronic entertainment we had radio and television. The television where I lived only had two channels until I was almost a teenager. Even so, many parents were worried that TV was rotting our brains. There was nothing akin to social media. You just hung out with your friends. Music has seen a lot of changes. No instant gratification in my childhood. If you wanted to hear a particular song and you didn’t own the record, you have to sit by your transistor radio tuned to your favorite station and wait for hours for them to get around to your song. I speak from experienc...

  The Dog Stars by Peter Heller is set in a post-apocalyptic near future. The “apocalyptic” event in this story is a pandemic that had happened off-screen, nine years earlier. Those who survived the ‘blood sickness’ are few and far between, but most of them you don’t want to meet. It is every man for himself, as is often the case in a post apocalypse. Our main character, Hig, is a pilot. He and his partner, Bangley, have made a small airport in Colorado their home base. Bangley is fanatical survivalist. We don’t like Bangley very much, but it is probably true that his presence has kept Hig alive. Banley’s attitude is shoot first and . . . well, don’t even bother asking questions, just shoot. Bangley thinks Hig is too full of the milk of human kindness, and he is probably right. As much as we detest Bangley, without him there to teach him and to look out for him, Hig would have long ago become dog meat. Having secured this airport and setting it up so they can see people coming f...

  I had always known the Swastika to be the symbol of the Nazi’s. A symbol of hatred, racism, genocide. A symbol of evil. But it turns out, the symbol was not always so. My first bit of education that the swastika meant something else, came from watching an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker . This was a 1970’s series featuring a wonderful Darren McGavin as a crusty reporter always on the trail of a monster of the week ( a great show, by the way). Kolchak investigating some deaths starts seeing swastikas everywhere and assumes the killer is a Nazi or related to Nazi’s. but he finds out the swastikas are being put up by a potential victim as a ward against evil. We learn that the swastika is an ancient sacred symbol used in the Hindu and other religions.   My second bit of education came not long after. I was in a Social Studies class in high school and in one of our projects, we were looking at old newspapers. The newspapers we were looking through were from 1910 ...

  When I was in my second year in college, I took a class called “General Sociology Through Film.” It seemed like it would be a fun class. Watching movies was part of the curriculum. I like movies. It was a great concept, and a popular class. I am not sure how much actual sociology I learned from that class, but maybe some of it sunk in. The class met on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Monday was a one-hour lecture about some sociological principle. Wednesday was a two-hour period where we watched the film for that week. Friday was a discussion of the film. There were a couple of mid-term exams and a final exam where we could prove that this was an academic experience. As I said, I couldn’t tell you what concepts I learned in the class, but I do remember the movies. Part of the class focused on human development: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, etc.. We skipped early development. For the young-adult leaving home for the first time, we watched Next Stop Greenwich Village . ...

  One summer, while I was working for the US Forest Service, I was assigned to do stream survey. The purpose of stream survey is to assess the health of a particular stream or network of streams for the fish population. My partner Ed and I went through training in the Spring and then began our survey of the North Fork of the Yachats River and all of its tributaries. Stream survey is an odd job. Both science and art. One member of the two-person team is designated as the estimator and the other is the recorder. Each day they switch jobs. The river is divided into habitat types of which there are three basic forms: riffles, pools, and glides. A pool is just what it sounds like. The bed is deeper and there is not much vertical drop from the upper side of the pool to the downstream side. Riffles are marked by a steeper drop in elevation and tend to be longer stretches of stream than pools. The surface of the water is rougher in a riffle as the water is moving faster. Riffles can incl...